The Garden City Telegram
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Issue: Garfield expansion
Published 9/3/2008 in News : Education
Editor's note: This is the second in a five-part series examining the individual facilities projects USD 457 would carry out upon successful passage of a $97.5 million bond issue on the Nov. 4 ballot. The next installment, about conversion of the main building of Garden City High School into a middle school, will appear on Saturday.
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
Garfield Elementary School would have a new home, a bigger building and a larger enrollment if USD 457 Garden City can use a portion of funds from a $97.5 million bond issue to carry out a remodeling project at Abe Hubert Middle School.
The largest portion of the bond issue, about $92.5 million, would go toward construction of a new high school to replace the current Garden City High School.
However, other funds would be used for several other projects district-wide, including conversion of the main GCHS building into a middle school mostly for Abe Hubert students, conversion of Abe Hubert into a four-tract elementary school mostly for Garfield students and expansion of Garfield so it could house all the district's early childhood education programs. In addition, J.D. Adams Hall, on the GCHS campus, is expected to house the New Outlook Academy alternative high school and USD 457's Therapeutic Education Program.
Work to be done
Architects estimate that making the changing the Abe Hubert building into an elementary school would cost about $750,000. Architects' fees, which amount to 7 percent of a remodeling project's cost, bring the total cost for the conversion to $802,500. USD 457 has hired the architectural firms of DLR Group, of Overland Park, and Gibson, Mancini, Carmichael & Nelson, of Garden City, for the bond issue projects.
The cost would cover work including installation of an elevator between the first and second floors, conversion of art classrooms into kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, and retro-fitting restrooms so they're suited for elementary children instead of middle schoolers, Superintendent Rick Atha said.
The elevator, the biggest expense, is a requirement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to architect Stuart Nelson. He said the building so far has been grandfathered in, but if the district were to do structural work at the facility -- like the proposed conversion -- it would have to be brought up to code and have an elevator included.
Nelson said expense of classroom work would be relatively nominal. Workers would leave the structural frame of the school intact, but might have to tear out and reconfigure a few non-load-bearing walls, he said.
Beyond the main elevator, classroom and restroom projects, Atha said he expects there would be some other tasks, like lowering coat hooks so they can be used by small children, that would be carried out by school district staff with the district's regular capital outlay budget.
A new school
With the proposed changes, Garfield Elementary School would look a lot different, not only in its outward appearance but also in its student and staff makeup.
Currently, the school includes two "tracts," or sets of kindergarten-through-fourth-grade classrooms, Atha said. Combined with an early childhood class, the school's total enrollment is about 260 students.
Early childhood students and their teachers would stay in the Garfield building, where they would be joined by Early Learning for Four-year-olds (ELF) and early childhood special education classes from across the district.
However, the rest of the students and staff in Garfield, plus some others from the district, would make the move to the converted building.
A move into Abe Hubert would almost double the elementary school's capacity, with the planned new Garfield expected to include four tracts, though Atha said he expects enrollment would be between 400 and 500. That's partly because a few of the Abe Hubert classrooms are smaller than some of those in the current Garfield building, which would prompt the district to put fewer students into those classes, he said.
District-wide impact
A larger enrollment at the new Garfield would mean some reconfiguring of elementary school boundaries across the district, though the changes have yet to be determined, district spokesman Roy Cessna said.
Ultimately, though, enrollment likely would decrease at some other schools as more students started attending the larger Garfield building.
The change, along with a move by early childhood classes into the proposed new early childhood center, would open up 26 to 30 elementary classrooms district-wide, Atha said. As a result, a mobile classroom at Georgia Matthews Elementary School would be eliminated, and the district is considering using at least some of the extra space to lower class sizes.
Reducing class size has been on the Board of Education's list of priorities for its facility plan since recommendations came more than a year ago from a USD 457 committee that researched what it thought would be the ideal educational setting for students.
Research showed that lowering class size tends to have the most significant impact on learning, when compared with other characteristics like a school's grade-level configuration, committee member Maurine Kozol, who then was principal at Jennie Wilson Elementary School, said at the time.
"That was the most profound thing we came up with," she said. "It was just glaring."
The group looked at data from schools in Wisconsin, Tennessee and California, all of which have state-wide initiatives to reduce class size.
Tennessee's Project STAR found that students in "small classes" (13 to 17 students) did better on Sanford Achievement Tests and basic skills tests in kindergarten through third grade than students in "regular classes" (22 to 25 students) in both rural and urban schools and for student of various backgrounds.
For the past several years, USD 457 has operated under a policy that caps its classes at 22 for kindergarten through second grade, 24 for third grade, 26 for fourth grade, 28 for fifth and sixth grade and 30 for seventh grade and up. The committee recommended making the hardest push for a reduction at the early grades.
"The research suggests that the time you can really do the most good and close the achievement gap is when students are young," Assistant Superintendent Shelly Kiblinger said.
The facilities changes that would be carried out with bond issue money would give USD 457 some of the space it needs to reduce elementary class sizes, but the initiative also would take money for the hire of additional teachers.
Atha said that if the time comes that the classrooms are available -- following projects like construction of a new high school, expected to be completed in 2012 if November's bond issue passes -- the board at the time will have to decide whether to devote funds to the idea and lower the class-size caps in its policy.
The freed-up elementary classrooms also could be used for other purposes, like giving permanent rooms to writing and art teachers, many of whom now travel from room to room, Atha said.
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